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I just finished my last class of 2013! Thank you so much for coming to my classes this year! I hope you enjoyed baking with me and learned some new recipes and tips^^!

By the way (to my students who took this class), here is the comparison of the pound cakes made using ‘spatula’ vs. ‘hand-mixer’. The one on the left is hand-mixer and the one on the right is spatula. You can see that the one on the left is more fluffier and looks nicer, but for this type of cake it’s better not to whisk too much because the cake gets too airy and dried. It really depends on what type of cake you are baking and also the recipes, and even among pound cakes they vary depending on the method you use, but for my recipes this Foret Noir pound cake and Pistachio pound cake can be said this way.

Anyway, if it’s too confusing for you, just enjoy baking and eating because all you want in the end is to have a stress release time while baking and see a Big Smile on your family & friends’ face when they eat your cakes!

…Just like I had them with my daughter’s 3 year old birthday cake!

Lastly, have a good year end and Happy New Year! I will see you again in 2014 soon! (I shall be posting schedule in the next few days.)

I see a lot of people having a long weekend! Some are visiting their families and some travelling overseas for Christmas holidays… ohhh sounds fun!

As for me, I am enjoying baking and talking to my students every day. My old students have also been coming by to my shop just to say ‘hi’ to me (aside from coming to classes), and I feel very happy seeing them again! This is the cake I taught yesterday, and the balance became my breakfast this morning with Blue Mountain Blend Coffee. Yum yum!

So today, I would like to introduce you a simple Sponge Cake Recipe. For details of the steps, please find it in my other post – Tips to Bake a Successful Sponge Cake (I added butter details). I hope some of you get to bake this cake and celebrate your Christmas Day!!!

1. In a mixing bowl, combine egg and granulated sugar. Put onto warm water and make it to 40-50 degree C (slightly warmer than your hand). Start whisking with high speed. Change to low speed and whisk for another few minutes.

2. Sift in all-purpose flour in 3 times and gently whisk.

3. Take one scoop of the batter and combine with melted butter and honey. Pour the batter back into the bowl and gently mix using spatula. Mix for about 20-30 times until the texture becomes shiny (butter well mixed in).

4. In a 180 degree C preheated oven, bake for 30-35 minutes. Take out from the oven and cool on a rack upside down.

5. Once its completely cooled down, decorate with whipped cream and strawberry or other fruits!

*The cake can be kept in the fridge with cling wrap for overnight before decoration. It can also be kept in the freezer for 1-2 weeks.

I was making macarons whole day today! I think I’ve made more than 250pcs… in requested turquoise color, oh yes, just like my shop wall color! It’s for someone’s wedding event this week. I am very happy that my macarons are chosen for these special occasions. ^^ Thank you!

Sometimes my macarons turn into those masterpiece – macaron tower! I supply custom made macarons (colors and flavors are up to customers) and the finishing will be made by someone else.

We also supply our macarons to cafes (around Shah Alam) every week, and that makes my days Very busy apart from preparing for classes and conducting classes…

And because I make so many macarons, sometimes I bring back the extras home and have them with a nice cup of coffee! yum yum…

I won’t be teaching Strawberry Short Cake this year for Christmas lesson, but if you are thinking of baking this cake for your special day, here are some tips!

1. Egg temperature (40-50 degree C):

Before whisking egg with sugar, warm up to 40-50 degree C. Do not warm higher than that, as it will make the cake too fluffy (I will explain to you later) or in worse case, make boiled egg ^^;

2. Whisking Egg

After warming the egg to 40-50 degree C, immediately whisk with hand-mixer high speed. This process will make the egg become easily fluffy, however, Do not whisk it too long, as ‘too fluffy’ texture (big air) causes the cake to “shrink” after you bake. The ideal texture is when you lift up the batter, it will drop and you see a ribbon line disappear in 1-2 seconds.

*In my class, if the cake looked very nice and shiny before you put into the oven but sink after you take out, that’s most probably you over-mixed in this step.

The important part is to shift the hand-mixer to low speed and mix for another few minutes. You need to break the big bubble into smaller and finer bubble. This will make the cake stable and it will not easily break the air during later part. If your mixer is too powerful and you are not sure whether the bubble became fine, just gently whisk with hand for about 50 times (ribbon disappear in 2-3 seconds). There is no harm for gently whisking for a long time ‘before’ you add in flour or butter.

3. Sugar (Granulated sugar or Caster sugar)

Sugar is very important in making this cake, for moisture and also to stablize the cake. And that’s why genoise always have quite an amount of sugar. So Do not simply change the amount so much from the recipe.

Also, I’d like to mention here that Caster sugar is slightly finer than Granulated sugar. So if you want to have more moisture and finer cake, you can try using Caster sugar.

4. Adding flour and butter

When you add flour and butter, careful not to ‘over-mix’. Add flour in about 2-3 times and gently whisk about 5 times each time you add in flour. I normally use whisk and not spatula for this process as it is easier for flour to dissolve into the batter. But when you mix in butter, change to spatula and gently mix for 20-30 times from the bottom of the bowl. If the batter becomes darker yellow and watery, it means you have mixed too much.

*Butter temperature should be about 40-50 degree. The cold butter wouldn’t mix in well with the batter, and the hot one will kill the air bubble and make a dense and hard cake. I usually melt the butter and leave it in a warm water until use.

5. Pouring into the mold

Try to pour the batter into a prepared mold all at once. If you touch the batter too many times, the bubble will break and the batter becomes too heavy, once again. If the last batter looks too thick (dark yellow), you either pour at the edge (not in the center), or don’t even bother to pour into the mold.

6. After bake

After you take out from the oven, drop once or twice from 10cm high on the table top and flip upside down onto the rack while to cool down. The fluffy sponge cannot resist the gravity so it will sink if you don’t flip.

Keeping those points in mind, I hope you can successfully make a sponge cake and decorate them nicely for your Christmas day!

You cannot spend Christmas without having a Ginger man cookie~! I like cinnamon spice so if you have noticed, many of my recipes this month have cinnamon flavor.

I have introduced ginger man cookie last year in Christmas menu and this year’s recipe is going to be different. This cookie will stay crunchy and crispy for many days, and not only that you can keep the dough in the freezer for 1~2 weeks easily so that you can prepare beforehand and bake them during Christmas!

The other recipe is going to be Raspberry Jam Sand Cookie. To avoid the jam from spilling out, we will use homemade raspberry jam thicker than usual. It also helps the cookie stay crispy for many days. We can make them into heart shape or flower and square shape like the photo. Doesn’t it look cute like button when you make some dots?

In the class we use raspberry jam, but this jam can be different such as Apricot jam or Blueberry jam. You can also add some cinnamon and ginger spice and make it like ginger man cookie (you can sandwich jam or not), so this cookie can be enjoyed in various ways!

Here are the schedules for this class;

DATE & TIME: December 22nd (Sun.) 10:30am-1:00pm

December 22nd (Sun.) 2:00pm-4:30pm

FEE: RM180.00 (RM99.00 for members!)

*8 students maximum.

To register for the class, please email me at caramelmoko@gmail.com (Tomoko). Thank you for visiting our site and I will be looking forward to hearing from you!!!

You might not be familiar with the name of Lintzer Torte (Tart Lintzer), but there’s a chance you might have tasted this tart before. It’s a traditional tart from Austria, and has cinnamonspice and lots of hazelnuts flavor inside. I like it for its crunchy and also crumbly feeling when you take a bite, and then the little additional burst of flavors when you chew! It’s a simple tart but has enough layers of texture and tastes that I think makes it different from the traditional local tarts here.

We will put hazelnuts and walnuts at the bottom of the tart crust, and sandwich it with homemade raspberry jam (recipe provided).

This tart is of course nice to eat it when it’s ‘just baked’ as it’s the most crispy, but it also tastes nice even after a few days to about a week when raspberry jam and the tart crust mixed in well and creates a harmony. You will often see this cake in a baking (non-chilled) section of French patisserie and the tart can last easily for 1-2 weeks. *For Malaysian weather I recommend you to keep in the fridge.

It also goes well with tea, so will be perfect a cake for you to enjoy tea time during Christmas season!

Here are the class dates;

DATE & TIME: December 14th (Sat.) 11:00am-2:30pm

December 27th (Fri.) 11:00am-2:30pm

FEE: RM180.00 (RM129.00 for members)

*8 students maximum.

To register for the class, please email me at caramelmoko@gmail.com (Tomoko). Thank you for visiting our site and I will be looking forward to hearing from you!!!

I have been baking this Foret Noir Pound Cake (Black Forest Pound Cake) many times as I talked about it in my previous post. It’s nice and quite fun to make. Each time I bake there were slight difference in look and texture, so it took a while for me to find out the perfect formula. It’s not as simple cake as you think!

It is a two layered cake – chocolate and vanilla cakes, and has a bit of cinnamon scent in the chocolate cake part. We will put pitted cherry in the class as it is Christmas Foret Noir style, but this can be changed to other fruits such as comported pair like the above photo. Each of you will bake this cake in 18cm pound cake mold.

The cake can be eaten both warm and cold, but I personally like it chilled! So in the class I will prepare a cake beforehand so that you all can try both warm and chilled kind. The cake can last for about a week in the fridge, so you can bake them beforehand and give them as a gift to your family and friends during Christmas!

Here are the class dates;

DATE & TIME: December 13th (Fri.) 11:00am-2:30pm

December 28th (Sat.) 11:00am-2:30pm – FULL

FEE: RM180.00 (RM129.00 for members)

*8 students maximum.

To register for the class, please email me at caramelmoko@gmail.com (Tomoko). Thank you for visiting our site and I will be looking forward to hearing from you!!!